Ramesh

Ramesh stood at the side of the road with his thumb out.

He was straining to get some passing driver's attention. He held his chin high and set the angle of his head to be dazzling. A broad smile advertised perfect teeth. His earring was in his pocket and he'd strapped his leather bag, which usually hung at his side, so that it could be yoked across his back, becoming a small backpack.

He was gripping his energy into a prayer, willing someone to stop and pick him up.

But no one did, which showed no judgment. He was a beautiful boy, not yet twenty, still at that mystical age of nineteen, when something ineffable, no matter what, happens and brings with it the keynote of the life to come, whether grief or joy.

He had a swimmer's build and he liked to work out. When he walked through the lanes and alleys of the great university, he nearly ran, and each step he took verged on becoming a graceful leap.

Girls looked at him with longing; boys, with despair. But he was dancing in his own world and whatever they saw in him that made them want him in a way they could not understand, he remained oblivious to it.

His heart was like the nighttime sky, a depth of darkness with incandescent moments only the imagination of vision might constellate into connected experience.

Now, after one rejection after another, his spirits began to flag, and he decided to give it a rest. He eased himself down onto an old tree stump a yard or so back from the shoulder of the road. The noise of the woods that bordered the road crept into his ears.

Fortunately it was early summer and if he had to sleep out in the open, he could. He'd smell the grass and listen to the birds and play a mantra in his mind.

But, strangely enough, although he had been frustrated when he was actively searching for a ride, once he sat down and had almost achieved bliss contemplating the idea of camping in the woods for the night, a convertible Mini pulled over to the side of the road and the driver, a young blond guy in a tennis sweater and sun glasses looked over and asked if he needed a ride.

Car broke down? he said throwing open the front door.

Don't have a car, Ramesh said, wickedly.

Get in, then, the driver said.

Thanks, Ramesh said. Are you going as far as the city?

New York?

New York, Ramesh said.

New York it is, the driver said, with a wink and a cluck, nodding his head reassuringly.

Ramesh clicked the seat belt into place.

Vic, the driver said.

Ramesh, Ramesh said.

They shook hands, each feeling the solidity of the other in that momentary encounter.

What kind of name is that?

Egyptian, Ramesh said.

Egyptian?

Yeah.

I'd have thought Indian.

No, Ramesh said, Egyptian.

You don't look Egyptian, Vic said facing him, laughing. You don't look Indian, either.

I'm not.

No?

No.

Then how come you have an Egyptian name? Vic said, maneuvering the convertible back onto the highway.

My mother's father's second wife was Egyptian.

Oh, Vic said, silenced.

And then, after a beat, You in school?

Not really.

Not really?

I was supposed to be, but I just said no.

What did you say no to?

Everything.

Everything?

Well not everything, only to everything that I thought had nothing to do with me.

How old are you? Vic said.

He was not being condescending. He admired the boy as he spoke, and vague as were his words, Vic understood them. So it was not with condescension but with care and from a need to place things in order that he asked.

Almost twenty, Ramesh said, almost blushing. You?

Twenty-six.

Old, Ramesh said.

Ready, Vic said.

The sun was a low fire to their left. Its last dimmed burnings gave an orange glow to everything.

What things have something to do with you? Vic said after breaking silence.

I don't talk about them, Ramesh said, implicitly with 'try again' shot into the tone.

What do you talk about? Vic obliged.

Anything else, Ramesh gigled.

Ok, what are the things that have nothing to do with you?

Everything else.

Laughing nervously at the absurdity of his answers, Ramesh, all the same, persisted in them, teasing.

Vic found nothing worse in himself as a response than a good-natured perplexity.

Come on, Ramesh, Vic said with a friendly grin. Give me a break.

What do you do? Ramesh said, his turn to be obliging.

I play piano in a dive.

Really? Ramesh said.

Yeah. You wanna come see me?

Sure. When?

Tonight, if you're not doing anything.

Tonight, Ramesh said.

Good, Vic said.

Yeah, but what do you really do? Ramesh said with a smile.

I pick up hitch-hikers, Vic said putting his hand on his firm thigh.

Alicia lived in a large, old, five room apartment on MacDougal Street. She called it funky. Actually it was run down. The landlord, a slumlord who lived in a penthouse in Forest Hills in the winter and a vacation home on Block Island in the summer, kept it that way. It was cheaper to pass around bribes at Christmas time than to keep the building up to code and the apartments in less than tumble down condition.

There was no intercom, and the downstairs door had been taken off its hinges long ago. Ramesh knocked on the apartment door and then knocked harder and when there was still no answer, he sat down on the staircase leading up to the next floor in the hallway outside her door.

What the hell are you doing here? she said with glee when she saw him. He stood up and she ran to his arms, grabbed him round the neck, and hugged him.

I ran away, he said.

From the school?

From the school.

What are you gonna do?

Don't know. That's why I want to ask you if I can crash for an unspecifiable length of time.

Yes, yes, of course. It always makes me happy to see you.

What are you doing tonight?

Going with Joan to see the exhibition on DeKooning and Pollack.

Not Jane?

Oh no. But what about tonight?

The guy who gave me a lift plays piano at Benny's tonight, and he invited me to go see him.

By this time they had entered Alicia's apartment, and she was lighting a joint.

She took a deep toke of the sweet stuff and handed the joint to Ramesh who did as she did. She exclaimed Wow as she exhaled, commenting on the prodigious capacity of his lungs as he inhaled. A grin danced on her face.

Can I take a shower?

Want me to wash your back?

Sure.

There's a pair of jeans you left and a t-shirt of Bobby's you can use. You have an old pair of sandals in the closet.

But she did not go into the shower with him and wash his back and he did not say anything about it. They both understood.

He was grown up now, not the boy she rescued when he was twelve and cared for in every way she could. When she had to go on assignment, she left him with her mother.

When Ramesh was fifteen, his mother decided she wanted him at home again and pursued a legal case against Alicia, threatening to assert that there had been carnal intercourse between Alicia, thirty four at the time and a good nineteen years older than the boy. Ramesh looked at her and she understood it would be alright to let him go. His dedication to insuring her safety and thwarting his mother by capitulating to her gave him strength.

She did not hear from him for over two years until the year before, when he turned eighteen. She got a long distance collect call from Poughkeepsie and he told her that he was free and had thought incessantly of her from the day they were forced apart.

She told him he was always welcome in her life.

Vic was bouncing his way through Somebody Loves Me when Ramesh walked in. He spotted him and swerved the tune into Ain't Misbehavin' and jumped that one around for a little while as its tintinnabulations became more charming with each return of the tune. He chugged through Please Don't Talk about Me When I'm Gone with plucky bravado and ended most strangely with a real about-face, The Moonlight Serenade.

Everyone was high and the long and happy applause was sincere, and you felt it by something in the room that made it the right place to be.

Give me a vodka and tonic, Buzz, Vic said as he and Ramesh sat at the bar during the break before his last set, and if no one's looking, give this minor one, too.

Buzz looked around and smiled. A sheen of perspiration covered his perfectly sculpted smooth bare chest.

Here you go kid, he said, and winked.

Hang around till the end of the set, Vic said raising his glass.

Sure, Ramesh said, tilting his glass in reciprocation.

Vic kicked at the gravel under his feet as they walked across the park.

I feel like something's going on with you and I don't like the feeling of your not letting me in on it.

I hardly know you, Ramesh said dumbfounded. I just met you this afternoon, by chance, and I heard you play tonight. And I know you can drive a car...which is more than I can do, but otherwise...

You don't know how to drive a car? Vic said, grasping at a straw.

Nope, Ramesh said. That's part of it, actually. I'm not gonna become part of that world.

I'll teach you.

To drive a car.

Vic nodded. Yeah.

I don't want to learn.

Then I'll have to become your chauffeur.

Make it without the car.

Ramesh put his arm around Vic's waist.

Vic backed him into a nearby tree and kissed him.

Ramesh groped him and held him, gently massaging him as he did.

I don't want this to be the last time, Vic said, striking a match and lighting the candle on the bedside table.

I am a will o' the wisp, Ramesh said.

You are a tease, a mystery and a tease, Vic said softly running a finger over Ramesh's smooth chest, and I'm telling you right now, and clearly, so you know, I want to capture you, and tame you, and own you.

That is so much what I am not into, Ramesh said and traced a lingering kiss across the length of Vic's lips.

So much more exciting will be my victory, Vic said in a stifled breath.

Ramesh looked at him without saying anything.

Speak, Vic said.

I ought to get back to Alicia's place.

No, you ought to stay the night, Vic said.

From nowhere Vic remembered that these were the same words he had once heard whispered in his ear many years ago as he had stood under the summer trees in a frightening embrace with a man he had just met. He knew if he did he would lose himself for good, and he tore himself away and sat in an empty suburban railroad station at midnight shaking, his eyes burning with hidden tears.

I don't want you to get hurt, Ramesh said.

And I don't want you to get hurt, Vic returned.

Ramesh stood on the terrace still in his wet-looking black bikini. It showed well the rounded mounds of a muscled ass with its chiseled clefts and the handsome sculpture of his cock and balls. He was looking out over the broad sun-stippled undulous back of the river. It was afternoon. He was happy, dreamy, in a waking trance he had never known before.

Vic lived in an old brownstone on Riverside Drive in the Eighties that his grandmother who had once slept with Edith Wharton left him, and from the fourth floor, the top floor, you could see the Hudson. His grandfather had invented safety matches and had marketed the first matchbooks.

Vic came out onto the terrace, an unlighted joint hanging from his lips. Ramesh took his hand, and kissed the palm, and drew nearer to him, and removed the joint, and touched Vic's lips with his, and let his mouth fall open. With delicate strokes of his own tongue across Vic's closed lips he made him open his mouth, too. With long implorations and gentle forays he sucked Vic's tongue into his mouth and swooned in surrender.

I want you to stay here, Vic said as Ramesh lay under him his legs spread, one resting on each of Vic's shoulders.

I want to know you belong to me.

I belong to you, Ramesh said.

Always, Vic said, not just when I'm inside you.

You are always inside me, Ramesh said, holding him tightly resisting the inevitable as Vic slid almost all the way out and melting with thankful honey as he returned.

Always.

He meant it when he said it, but that did not mean he was able to submit himself completely to the full will and direction of anybody else. But he slowly began to realize that his useless moments of rebellion were no match for Vic's discipline.

Vic not only had the lithe physique of a tennis player. He had the grit and determination of an athlete. His calm and steady focus was the outward sign of fierce determination and a raging fire to command that fueled ever his thought and action.

Just the force of Vic's look could paralyze Ramesh. It could make him become as still as stone.

Vic was tenacious. When first he saw Ramesh at the side of the road something like a steel rod solidified within him, surging through his chest and making him tight with desire. Nothing less than absolute possession would content him now. He was as obsessive in desire as a thief.

And he was perceptive, perceptive enough to discover what even Ramesh himself had not known until Vic touched him. He was a slave to the sensations that Vic elicited.

I am going to have your nipples pierced, Vic said.

My nipples?

Pierced.

Pierced? Ramesh frowned thoughtfully. I'm not sure...

Pierced, Vic said, nodding his head, smiling.

Oh, Ramesh said. I see.

Do you like what you see?

I think so, Ramesh said.

But it really does not matter whether or not you do, Vic said.

No?

No, Vic said shaking his head.

Then their speech became sound without words; excitement had crossed a boundary. They had gone from the gentle realm of voluntary sweetness to the involuntary ravage of the earth's force breaking within them.

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